Seventeen years ago, on this day, March 11th, 2008,
Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol comes into effect:
ALSO –
The Government issues the Initial Report under the Kyoto Protocol detailing how Australia aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the question of emissions reductions for countries, especially for rich ones, had been the absolute core of the early international climate negotiations from 1988 onwards. Poor countries said, “Well, if there’s going to be a limit on who can emit what, we need to emit more so that we can bring our people up to a decent standard of living that you already have in the West. Therefore rich countries have to go first,“ And this was reluctantly, sort of accepted by rich countries. But targets and timetables had been kiboshed by the George HW Bush administration (1989-1993), Then by the time of the first COP in Berlin (1995), positions had hardened. But nonetheless, there was a Berlin Mandate for negotiations to happen among and for rich countries to come to the third COP with a plan for emissions reductions.
Australia, led by John Howard, had squealed and wailed and stamped its feet, and through that and sheer exhaustion, carved out an exceptionally generous deal at Kyoto, their “reduction” target was actually 108% and that’s before you even counted the Australia cause clause, the land clearing clause, which meant that ultimately, Australia’s target for “reduction” was 130% emissions higher than they had been
Still this wasn’t enough. So you had the Kabuki theater all through the 2000s about Kyoto ratification. And this is a some sort of indicator of virtue.
This is all very well covered in an academic article called The Veil of Kyoto.
See also Stephen Gardiner 2004.
See also Rayner and Prins 2008 “The Wrong Trousers”
So Labor’s Kevin Rudd had used Kyoto ratification as a stick to beat John Howard with. And it worked. And Rudd’s first action as prime minister was to ratify Kyoto. And here we are, three months later, utterly meaningless, but in the context of the road to Copenhagen, it showed Australian alleged willingness to be less of an asshole, Rudd had got a big standing ovation when he attended the Bali COP in 2007.
What I think we can learn from this
There are these sorts of synecdoche where signing this bit of paper, making this pledge, whatever is taken as an indicator, like a brown M&M, of seriousness.
What happened next
Rudd comprehensively flubbed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and gave away more and more to the fossil fuel interests, hoping that they would eventually be happy. Eventually it was so weak that the Greens, who Rudd had been ignoring, couldn’t stomach it.
Thanks to Julia Gillard’s minority government, Australia then did eventually get some really weak carbon pricing which maybe had some influence on emissions (or maybe it was Tasmanian hydroelectric power entering the grid. )
Anyhoo, here we are with the emissions climbing and the impacts hitting us. But hey, Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day
March 11, 1959 – Warmer Arctic Raising World’s Sea Level…
March 11, 1969 – NASA explains need to monitor C02 build-up to politicians
March 11, 1989 – warm words at The Hague, where the climate criminals should be sent…
